A TV producer’s angle on social media video

We were delighted to give a couple of workshops for the Cambridge Network and Cambridge Social Media Meetup this week. The theme was making great social media video, but rather than talk about equipment or SEO, we felt that we had something to say that could usefully complement all the good technical and marketing advice out there.

In TV, we spend almost all of our time discussing some ideas you don’t hear in social media (or corporate) video often:

Format

Genre

Characters

Story point of view

Special access

Visual metaphor

We had a lovely time discussing with attendees how these ideas might inspire better social video. Maybe there’s a reason TV (and YouTube) has settled on particular formats, universally used by successful shows or channels on all kinds of subject matter…

Cambridge TV School has received lots of requests for training in social media video skills in recent months. They have developed workshops that combine technical tips for making high quality video yourself, without expensive equipment, but also tackling these TV-like approaches to storytelling that attract loyal audiences in every medium from radio to YouTube.